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REVOLUTIONARY TEACHERS: WOMEN and GENDER in the CUBAN LITERACY CAMPAIGN of 1961 Ann E. Halbert-Brooks a Thesis Submitted To

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REVOLUTIONARY TEACHERS: WOMEN and GENDER in the CUBAN LITERACY CAMPAIGN of 1961 Ann E. Halbert-Brooks a Thesis Submitted To REVOLUTIONARY TEACHERS: WOMEN AND GENDER IN THE CUBAN LITERACY CAMPAIGN OF 1961 Ann E. Halbert-Brooks A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of History. Chapel Hill 2013 Approved by: Louis A. Perez Jr. John C. Chasteen Miguel A. LaSerna ©2013 Ann E. Halbert-Brooks ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT ANN E. HALBERT-BROOKS: Revolutionary Teachers: Women and Gender in the Cuban Literacy Campaign of 1961 (Under the direction of Louis A. Perez Jr.) The Literacy Campaign of 1961 brought the literacy rate in Cuba from 77 to 96 percent, an increase of nearly one million people, in just twelve months. While this achievement is notable, the Literacy Campaign also proposed a new ideal of womanhood in the wake of the 1959 revolution. Before the revolution, 80 percent of all teachers in Cuba were women and the profession was regarded as a low-status one. The publicity for the 1961 Literacy Campaign, however, presented teaching as heroic, patriotic, and difficult work, frequently drawing on metaphors of warfare and struggle for intellectual empowerment to energize the public. This message was presented in virtually every media outlet—newspapers, magazines, television, movies, and radio—on a daily basis. The women who taught in the Literacy Campaign used this rhetoric to claim greater freedom and responsibility for themselves, even when the reaction of the general public was more ambivalent. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ………………………………………………….…………………...v Chapter I. INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………….…………..1 II. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1961 …………………………………………………...3 III. WAR ON IGNORANCE ……………………………………………………..9 IV. ILLITERACY IN CARICATURE ………………………………………….17 V. WOMEN BRIGADISTAS …………………………………………………….22 VI. ADULT WOMEN IN EDUCATION ……………………………………….32 VII. VICTORY ………………………………………………………………….40 VIII. CONCLUSION ……………………………………………………………46 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………..............48 iv LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. “To be educated is to be free”…………………………………………………12 2. Conrado Benítez……………………………………………….........................13 3. “Pausas de felicidad”………………………………………………………….14 4. “Attack, comrades! Against the illiteracy!”…………………………………...18 5. “Cultural Trench Warfare”……………………………………........................18 6. “The Great Battle for Literacy”……………………………………………….19 7. “The Cover of the Grave”……………………………………………………..19 8. “I’m out of here…”……………………………………………........................19 9. Untitled………………………………………………………………………..19 10. “I am Feeling Bad”…………………………………………………………..20 11. “Teaching and Reward”……………………………………………………...20 12. “You’re Hired!”……………………………………………………………...21 13. Cover of Bohemia, January 22……………………………………………….25 14. Cover of Bohemia, November 12……………………………………………26 15. Cover of Bohemia, December 10…………………………………………….27 16. Cover of Bohemia, December 17…………………………………………….27 17. A Young Brigadista………………………………………………………….28 18. Training in Varadero…………………………………………........................28 19. Onelia Marín…………………………………………………........................29 v Introduction In the census of 1899 after the Cuban War of Independence, only 43 percent of the Cuban population could read and write. Public figures of the day decried this figure and worked to offer the Cuban people greater access to education. By 1907, the literacy rate had risen to 57 percent, 62 percent the following decade, and 72 percent in the census of 1931. After 1931, however, literacy rates stagnated, remaining almost constant in the 1943 and 1953 censuses.1 Public opinion uniformly bemoaned these conditions, with newspapers, magazines, and public figures regularly calling for change. Even foreign researchers shared this frustration, such as the American sociologist Lowry Nelson, who observed: “there appears little rational explanation for the apparent neglect of education in recent years.”2 The problem of illiteracy was particularly acute in rural areas and among the poor, nonwhite population. For example, Oriente, the poorest province in Cuba, only reached a 65 percent literacy rate by 1953 and estimates of rural literacy rates nationwide were just 58 percent.3 Fidel Castro and the 26th of July Movement that took power in January 1959 agreed with the general sentiment that the 76 percent literacy rate of 1953 was unacceptable.4 However, unlike previous Cuban governments, this one proposed to 1 Lowry Nelson, Literacy of the Cuban Population, n.d. 837.42/3-46, 2. 2 Ibid., 3. 3 Anna Lorenzetto and Karel Neys, Methods and Means Utilized in Cuba to Eliminate Illiteracy (UNESCO, 1965), 15. 4 Oficina Nacional de los Censos Demográfico y Electoral, Censos de pblación, viviendas y electoral (Havana: Tribunal Superior Electoral, 1953), 143. eliminate illiteracy in a matter of months. In September 1960, Fidel Castro announced the project on his visit to the United Nations in New York, inviting the rest of the world to judge its success or failure. This project, formally called the Literacy Campaign, formally began on January 28, 1961 and concluded successfully on December 22 of that year. More than 200,000 Cubans volunteered as teachers, 105,000 of them young adults between the ages of twelve and nineteen known as Conrado Benítez brigadistas. Propaganda materials for the Literacy Campaign frequently described brigadistas as members of an army dedicated to the patriotic task of fighting illiteracy and ignorance. These brigadistas were assigned to teach illiterate Cubans in the most remote parts of the country, exposing young men and women to extreme poverty most had never seen before. Brigadistas overwhelmingly described their service as a positive experience, with young women particularly recalling their service in the national struggle against ignorance as an empowering one. Unlike previous generations of young women, female brigadistas were encouraged to travel far from home without direct adult supervision and occupied positions of authority. Many credited the Literacy Campaign with giving them the confidence to pursue careers of their own, rather than becoming housewives. While individual brigadistas found the Literacy Campaign empowering, its effects were more limited in society as a whole. As an institution, the government of Fidel Castro and the 26th of July Movement demonstrated an ambivalent attitude toward the emancipation of women, frequently mobilizing them for specific projects under the direction of groups like the Federacíon de Mujeres Cubanas (FMC) while delaying comprehensive changes. 2 The Campaign of 1961 In 1961, the new Cuban government printed two million textbooks for its 1.2 million soon-to-be-literate citizens.5 The first lesson in these slim, cheaply printed black and white books centered on the letters OEA, the Spanish acronym for the Organization of American States. Individually, these three vowels were the first letters many Cubans would read, but together they also represented “an organization joining the countries of the Americas, used by Yankee imperialists to impose their will on Latin American countries.”6 The government that produced these textbooks intended to communicate a particular message through the written word. That message, prepared and spread by the National Literacy Commission in the Ministry of Education, led by Armando Hart Dávalos, was one of a future with universal literacy, racial and sexual equality, economic prosperity, and political autonomy. In short, the National Literacy Commission promised a revolution far greater than the one that succeeded in 1959. The first major initiative in that continuing revolution was the Literacy Campaign of 1961. While universal literacy might appear a universally acceptable goal, the work of the National Literacy Commission in Cuban Literacy Campaign of 1961 indicated a particularly strong commitment to this goal as it was the first major project of a young and inexperienced government. A mere two years before, Fulgencio Batista fled the 5 Richard Fagen, Cuba: The Political Culture of Adult Education (Stanford: Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, 1964), 14. 6 ¡Venceremos! (Havana: Imprenta Nacional de Cuba, 1961), 1-5; Alfabeticemos (Havana: Imprenta Nacional de Cuba, 1961. country, forced from power by Fidel Castro and the 26th of July Movement. Their insurgency against Batista began in 1953, centered in the Sierra Madre Mountains of eastern Cuba, and by 1958 insurgents controlled significant territory but still lacked a comprehensive plan for administering the entire nation. On taking power in January 1959, Castro and the 26th of July Movement faced the challenges of governing a country with high rates of unemployment and inequality, albeit with a euphoric populace cheering for radical change. Some of these changes arrived quite soon—in March 1959, for example, legal racial segregation and discrimination were abolished. Reductions in rents and utility rates also appeared in the first months of 1959, increasing real wages for the working class by nearly 15 percent.7 Expectations remained high into 1960, when polls estimated that 65 percent of Cubans saw themselves as better off than before 1959, and 74 percent expected further gains in the next five years as well.8 Despite this general optimism, domestic and international opposition to the government remained: supporters of the former Batista dictatorship still carried out acts of sabotage and terrorism, and the United States, traditionally the largest trade partner of Cuba, showed its ever-increasing displeasure
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